


A Charmed Cage

by rosecake



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fairies, Magic, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-22 06:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12475868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/pseuds/rosecake
Summary: Her life isn't bad, she knows that, but she can't stop herself from wanting more.





	A Charmed Cage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).



Rose read by what little light the setting sun still provided, her legs tucked up underneath her as she sat in the alcove by her bedroom window. If she were truly paying attention to the book she would have lighted a lamp ages ago to make things easier on her eyes, but her mind was wandering, probably because she'd already read this particular book a million times before. She'd read every book in their tiny cottage over and over again until she practically had them all memorized.

"Are you feeling well, dear?" asked Merryweather.

The sound of her voice shook Rose from her reverie, and it was only when she looked up that she realized how dark it had gotten inside her room.

"Oh, yes, I'm fine," said Rose, letting the book fall closed on her lap. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, no reason," said Merryweather, although she sounded unconvinced by Rose's response. Well, perhaps Rose had been a bit listless recently. "Would you like to go for a walk? Some fresh air before bed might be nice."

"No, thank you," said Rose. "I think I'd rather stay in."

"Are you sure? You always talk about how lovely the woods are when the sun is setting."

Rose sighed. The woods were lovely, at any time of day, but by this point she knew every inch of the forest around them just as well as she knew the cottage itself. And as much as she loved her home, it was a _small_ home. There wasn't much to know.

"I know. But I've done nothing but follow the same trails for years now. Just once I'd like to see the ocean, or mountains, or even the inside of a castle. I'm sure they're all lovely, too."

Merryweather twisted the edge of her apron around in her hands. She was flustered, like all Rose's aunts always got whenever she talked too much about the world outside their cottage. Rose wouldn't even bring it up, because she didn't like to upset them, but the castle always looked so tantalizingly close whenever she caught a glimpse of it through the trees. What could it hurt to visit just once? Her aunts had to make trips to get supplies all the time, why couldn't she go along as well?

Rose expected Merryweather to simply change the subject like she usually did, but she was surprised when Merryweather reached forward and took her hand instead.

"I know you're getting older, my dear Briar Rose, and the cottage must be getting a little cramped. But once you're fully grown things are going to change much faster than you could ever imagine. You've just got to be patient."

The sentiment was reassuring, but the effect didn't last very long. Whatever in her life was meant to change, it wasn't happening fast enough for Rose.

/ / /

Rose wasn't planning on going far. Really, she wasn't, and she'd only even bothered to put her boots on because they were far enough along into the autumn weather than the ground was too cold for her bare feet. It wasn't necessarily because she planned to do much walking. But they couldn't be that far from other people, could they? None of her aunts ever left long enough to make the trip all the way to the castle, so there must be a village or some traders nearby.

It wasn't as if she expected to see a ball or a carnival or anything even remotely fanciful like that. She'd be excited just to see a village. Or even a cottage that wasn't the one she'd grown up in. Then she'd head right back home, long before she was missed.

She knew how far she was allowed to stray from the cottage very well, and it wasn't very far at all. It took her no time at all to find her way to the boundary and cross it, making her way along the banks of the river. The castle was to the south, and it stood to reason that she'd be more likely to come across civilization if she headed in that direction. There were no roads in the forest, not even dirt walking paths once she got away from the cottage itself, just soft impressions in the earth left by animals making their way through the underbrush. Rose was the only person who walked these woods, and she tread just as lightly as the deer.

Even though she was exploring new territory, these were still her woods, and she was an expert in them. She had years of experience navigating the trees and streams around her, and even if she were to make a mistake her animal friends would be quick to point her back in the right direction.

So she knew, with absolute certainty, that she hadn't gotten turned around without realizing it. Still, when she finally came across a cottage, it was her own.

Flora was waiting for her, arms crossed, a look of dismay on her face. Fauna, on the other hand, waved happily and seemed perfectly pleased to see her.

"You've been gone for ages!" said Flora. "You shouldn't go so far into the forest alone. What if you'd gotten lost? What if you got stranded out in the woods at night?"

Rose had actually spent a few of her nights outside in the forest, gazing up at the stars with the rabbits and deer tucked in around her to keep her warm, instead of sleeping in her own bed. The thought of being in the woods at night didn't worry her at all.

"I'd never get lost," she said, a little hesitantly, because she clearly had somehow gotten her directions mixed up since she'd ended up back at the cottage without meaning to.

"It's dangerous!" huffed Flora.

"Oh, she's fine, you don't have to worry so much about everything," said Fauna. "Let her go where she wants. The charm steered her right back home again, didn't it?"

"Charm?" asked Rose, and Flora immediately clamped a hand over Fauna's mouth.

"Oh, she didn't mean anything by that!" said Flora, shoving Fauna back into the cottage. "You know Fauna, always talking such nonsense!"

Rose sighed. They always tried so hard to pretend they never used magic, even around each other, but Rose wasn't a little girl anymore. Over the years she'd caught each of them using their wands at least once, even though they always denied what was happening afterwards, but their explanations had gotten less and less believable as she'd gotten older.

A charm, though, that was discouraging. If it had only been a mistake, if she'd only overestimated her knowledge of the woods and how to navigate them, then she could have just asked the birds for help next time. She didn't think the birds would be much help against a charm meant to keep her trapped.

She left Flora and Fauna to argue in the living room and made her way to her bedroom. Logically she knew it was the same size it always was, but somehow it felt smaller every day.

/ / /

None of her aunts ever taught her anything of magic. They were all too busy trying to convince her that they'd never used it. Still, Rose had picked up a few things from her books. At least she though she had - it was hard to tell what was real and what was only make-believe, especially since asking her aunts often got her contradictory answers.

But in one story, the witch's curse was dissolved by standing under a waterfall. In another, a demon couldn't cross a flowing stream. And Rose thought, well, running water was worth a try, wasn't it? It wasn't as if she had anything more exciting to do with her days than try.

The next morning she made her way down to the river just south of their cottage, hiked up her dress, and carefully started wading downstream. She moved slowly, probably too slowly to get her anywhere interesting in only a day's journey even if her aunts' charms didn't turn her around again, but she couldn't swim, and so it seemed safer and more sensible to take her time and be careful. In the future she could put more thought into how to better cover more ground, but at the moment the cool water felt lovely flowing around her ankles, and she was content to simply walk for a while, even if it didn't really get her anywhere.

She carried on at a steady pace until the sun started to go down in the sky. She stood in the still quiet of the forest, the water lapping gently midway up her calves. A bluejay called out to her from the branches, and she looked up at it and smiled.

"Well," she said, "I may not have found anything, but at least I didn't circle back. How far do you think I am from the cottage?"

The bluejay twittered happily at her. A few miles, most likely.

"Well, I believe that's quite a bit further than I've ever gone before."

Rose turned and started back the way she came. Her aunts would miss her if she were away much longer, and she didn't want them to worry.

/ / /

The next time she went upstream instead of down, and she still found nothing, but by the time she got back to the cottage she had a little more information to add to the map she'd put together. She didn't have much faith in her own amateur surveying skills, and the charms that had been put up around the cottage might very well muddle things even further, but it was at least _something_. Some way of pinning her world, as small as it was, down on paper.

Rose compared her own map to the ones her books, but nothing ever seemed to match up very well. She didn't even know the name of the castle she could see but not quite reach, but she'd figure it out eventually.

She managed to get a little further from home with each trip. But Merryweather was waiting for her when she got back one evening, apron twisted in her hands again.

"Did you have a nice walk?" asked Merryweather.

"Yes, it's lovely weather for being so deep into winter. You should come with me next time."

Rose smiled at her, hoping that it would make Merryweather smile too, but she had no such luck.

Merryweather frowned, concern etching itself into the corners of her face. "You need to stay closer to the cottage. You're getting older, and-" she said, stopping herself mid-sentence, as if she'd though better about what she'd meant to say. "It's dangerous. You don't know who could be roaming about in these woods! You should stay nearby in case there's any trouble."

Rose sighed, and put a hand on Merryweather's shoulder to calm her. She'd lived in these woods for very near sixteen years now, and not once had she ever seen another living soul. "Don't worry, she said. "I promise I'll always come back."

/ / /

The fairies put endless labor and love into their plan to keep her safe. Her parents sacrificed so much in the hopes that it would work. Aurora herself gave up sixteen years of her life, but it the end none of it was enough to save her from Maleficent.

Aurora slept, and in her dreams she saw places she'd never been, and a man she'd only truly met once.

/ / /

When she woke, one of the first things she learned was that you could get a lot further from home on horseback than you could using your own two feet. Samson could make the trip from her cottage to the castle in a matter of hours, even carrying her, Phillip, and a few saddlebags filled up with her belongings. It took far less time than she could have imagined to fully shift her whole life from the cottage to the caste keep.

"I know you said you wanted to see the world, but there's a lot we've got to get straightened out before we can leave," said Phillip, his voice full of apology, for what reason Aurora couldn't imagine. "It'll be a few weeks before we can get away. But I promise it'll be a spectacular honeymoon."

"I don't mind waiting," she said, smiling. She'd spent so much of the past week smiling, half convinced she must still be dreaming, because surely the waking world couldn't be this nice.

She'd only wanted to get away from the cottage, just for a little while, and now she had a new husband, a new family, and a new home. She even had a new name, one that felt strangely fitting despite being so new to her. And there were so many places in the world she'd only read about in books, and Phillip had promised her she'd see them with her own eyes before long.

A few weeks wouldn't even be long enough to fully explore the castle, let alone the villages and fields surrounding it. She didn't mind waiting to see all the lakes and oceans and cities even further away.

"I do have one favor to ask for today, though," she said, and explained what she was looking for.

It didn't take him long to find the map she'd asked for, a map of her parent's kingdom, and when she pulled out her own little map she'd made of the forest around the cottage he helped her figure out where it fit in the grander scheme of things.

"I think that's right," he said, once they'd settled on a little spot to the north of the castle. "I've got to admit, I got turned around something awful in those woods during all the chaos, but the river matches up, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Aurora. "Yes, I think it matches up perfectly."

She rolled the map up and returned it to the spot Phillip had taken it from, her own scrap of map tucked away inside it. Aurora didn't feel like she'd need it anymore.

She knew where her place in the world was now, and it was a far grander world than she'd ever dared expect.


End file.
